Originally recorded on 5 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 10 digital wav files. Duration is 7 hr., 6 min. Sound quality is fair; beginning and endings of tapes tend to be garbled and low.

Access Note / Rights:

Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.

Summary:

An interview of Sylvan Cole conducted 2000 June-October, by Avis Berman, for the Archives of American Art.

The interviews took place over five sessions in New York, New York. Cole discusses the history of Associated American Artists, the gallery for whom he began working in 1946, and its marketing techniques, customer base, and personalities, such as its founder, Reeves Lewenthal. He also traces his own development as a dealer in prints after he left AAA and recalls many artists and other figures in the art world, including Will Barnet, Werner Drewes, Richard Florsheim, Helen Frankenthaler, David Hockney, Hans Hofmann, Edward Hopper, Una Johnson, Jacob Kainen, Jack Levine, William S. Lieberman, Robert Motherwell, and Raphael Soyer.

Citation:

Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Sylvan Cole, 2000 June-October. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Additional Forms:

Transcript available on-line.

Funding:

Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service.

Biography Note:

Sylvan Cole (1918-2005) was an art dealer and writer of New York, New York.

Provenance:

This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.